Until the first heady weeks of Tucson’s scorching summer, Vivek Bharathan and Elaina Richards had never worked or campaigned together, let alone been on a shared Google document.
One month into coordinating a campaign against a proposed data center in Tucson, they’ve still never met in person.
But what they’re hoping to fight off is very real: a 290-acre data center campus that is one of the largest development projects ever to be considered by the city or county, which they warn would be a drain on Tucson’s water, energy and environment.
Shrouded in secrecy, with a final user obscured behind an LLC and public officials bound by a non-disclosure agreement, the so-called Project Blue cleared its first hurdle on June 17 when the Pima County Board of Supervisors approved the sale and rezoning of county-owned land.
What’s coming next
- Public meeting on Project Blue on July 23 from 5-7 p.m. at Mica Mountain High School, 10800 E. Valencia Rd. The event will be livestreamed.
- Watershed Management Group will hold an information and postcard writing session on Thursday, July 24, from 5:30-7 p.m. Learn more here.
- A second public meeting has been tentatively scheduled for July 31 by Mayor Regina Romero’s office, with a location still to be finalized. Watch Tucson’s Project Blue information page for details.
The next big decisions about the project will be made by Tucson City Council, but in the weeks since Project Blue cleared its first public vote, a movement against the data center has been gaining steam, mirroring the sense of urgency and recognition of the enormity of the proposal that its proponents are putting forward.
That opposition is made of a loose coalition of Tucsonans that builds on a rich history of environmental stewardship, dynamic Tucson-area organizing communities and skepticism of resource-heavy development in the desert.
Like some of the broad and successful local organizing groups before it — the No New Jail Coalition that successfully pushed back on an expensive new county jail facility in 2024 or Transit for All that has helped bring about, and maintain, free bus fares in Tucson — the speed with which the data center group began working was also a product of the fluidly interconnected digital and physical spaces in Tucson.
Its goal: No to a desert data center.
“Pretty much everyone I’ve talked to about this thinks it’s a terrible idea,” said Vivek, one of the organizers with No Desert Data Center and a member of the communications team. “The desert is no place for a water-guzzling, energy-draining, heat-generating monster.”
“You find yourself in a group chat”
Vivek and Elaina first joined the data center organizing effort in the days and weeks leading up to the Pima County Board of Supervisors’ vote to sell and rezone land for a 290-acre data center. Outraged after hearing the plan, they soon found themselves in a Signal group with others who shared their concerns.
“You just start talking about something online and, in this day and age, all of a sudden you’re responding to people and they’re telling you about stuff that’s happening and you find yourself in a group chat,” said Elaina, a lifelong Tucsonan. She had been involved in the Transit for All coalition but had not done environment organizing before.
The first public engagement with Project Blue was the June 17 Board of Supervisors meeting — the first time Elaina had ever attended meetings of that body. For Vivek, it was one of the first few times he had spoken at a public meeting.
“I’m a small business owner here in Tucson,” he said at the meeting, “and as a small business owner I’m losing most of my day in income being here to urge you to oppose this plan as it stands.”
During the meeting, board members heard a presentation promising 180 new jobs, lower electricity costs for all Tucson-area customers (despite a proposed 14% rate hike by Tucson Electric Power separate from Project Blue) and that the project would eventually be powered entirely by renewable energy.
“Promises have been made that if they are fulfilled could make this project a model for how to balance economic development and environmental protection,” said Supervisor Rex Scott, who voted in favor of the measure, which passed the board with a 3-2 vote.
Meanwhile, fueled in part by outrage over the vote, the Signal chat group of people who wanted to oppose the data center continued to grow.
Angelantonio Breault, who runs the Reconciliación en el Río project, had also been added to the Signal group. “One of these Signal chats started blowing up, and people were just getting added into them random willy-nilly, because people were freaking out,” he said.
Then someone floated that people interested in the organizing meet in person to build trust.
“I was like, ‘I think this is great,’’ he said.
That first in-person meeting happened just days after the Board of Supervisors vote. A group of people interested in discussing the data center connected following one of the informal “walk and talk” gatherings held by the Tucson Birthplace Open Space Coalition, a group working to protect the land at the base of “A” Mountain as open space.
“I think that was a really beautiful moment and a great example of what we were able to witness: This energy that we were cultivating together by gathering intentionally on the land that then served as a jumping off point.”
Since then, the effort has developed into a central planning group with several working groups. The goal has been educating people ahead of the next milestones: a series of public forums and the city council public hearing on the measure, with possible votes set in the fall.
“That became our focus after the Board of Supervisors meeting. Basically anybody who wanted to join the Signal group could join,” said Vivek. “Anyone who comes to one of these meetings and wants to contribute and demonstrates a commitment to contribute is welcome.”
People gravitated to positions that met their strengths.
Vivek is in the communications working group, where, along with others, he contributes talking points and copy for the website. He is also in the planning and organizing group, where he has done some project management. Helping form a union his last workplace taught him about working together, in a non-hierarchical setting, toward a specific goal, he says.
Angelantonio has worked in the environment space for a long time, and contributes to the coalition sign-up form, sharing information on an Instagram page he runs and collecting white papers on water quality issues.
Elaina has degrees in sociology, advocacy communications and public health. She is on the research and communications team, where her work includes researching air quality, welcoming people and keeping notes on how the organizing and planning conversations develop among the group.
As part of that work, she has been researching what body would regulate the data center’s emissions and how those emissions would impact the county’s efforts to maintain clean air as a whole.
Data centers that use diesel powered generators release nitrogen dioxide, which then reacts with other chemicals in the air to form ozone that can be harmful to breathe. While not all data centers use diesel power, many do.
“Because we could have this one polluter in our county, the collective levels for our county are increased and that could put us into a new category of risk,” she said, thinking through the unintended consequences of the data center. “Ground level ozone from this project could put us over that tipping point or we would have to do even more regulation [which would be] costly to other county businesses that actually serve the people here much better than this data center potentially would.”
Elaina isn’t entirely against data centers, but says the secrecy and scale of the project have been cause for alarm. “It’s the unknowns of those costs that makes me a hard line opposition to this project in particular.”
What we know about the project so far
Size
The proposed size of the land for the initial project is 290 acres that are north of Pima County Fairgrounds and west of Houghton Road. It is currently in unincorporated Pima County but would be annexed by the city of Tucson.
Operator
The ultimate operator behind the project remains unknown. Humphrey’s Peak Properties LLC is on the development agreement with Tucson, and Beale Infrastructure is named as the development company.
Water
The initial phase will require potable water. City documents say that use is slated for less than two years. Project Blue then proposes to build infrastructure to deliver reclaimed water to its site.
Supervisors
The Pima County Board of Supervisors voted on July 17 to approve the sale and rezoning of a county-owned parcel of land to developers.
Largest public infrastructure
The reclaimed water infrastructure proposed as part of the project represents “the largest public infrastructure project funded by a private developer in Tucson’s history,” according to a city document. The project is projected to be a $3.6 billion total capital investment over its multi-year construction period.
Jobs
The annual average salary of the jobs the data centers will create is $64,000, according to a county memo
Months of public hearings and big decisions
The proposed location of the data center sits on a chunk of land north of the Pima County Fairgrounds, west of Houghton Road. On a quiet weekday evening, palo verde trees sway in a light breeze over an array of scrubby grasses as far as the eye can see. While the highway isn’t far, the nearby shooting ranges and fairgrounds are still. The sound of birds flitting by cholla at sunset break up the stillness.
In the coming weeks, city officials will hold several public forums about the data center ahead of an Aug. 19 public hearing on the project. At that same meeting, the council could vote proceeding with the agreement. Final consideration from the council on annexing the site could happen in October, and consideration of the zoning procedure is tentatively set to take place in November.
It’s often hard to gauge public opinion, but there seems to be consistent energy and numbers around opposition to the data project.
Most of the comment letters to the Pima County Board of Supervisors ahead of their approval of the data center were against the center. Some of those in favor included Tech Parks Arizona, construction advisory firm Rider Levett Bucknall, the Southern Arizona Leadership Council and the Tucson Association of REALTORS.
The No Desert Data Center Instagram page has more than 1,000 followers while a Change.org petition calling on Tucson City Council to oppose Project Blue has 4,814 signatures as of July 17.
Angelantonio’s work with the Reconciliación en el Rio project has been about repairing some of the harms the Santa Cruz River and watershed have experienced through what he frames as data centers of the past — agriculture, railroads, open pit mines.
“We have seen many times short-sighted, environment-like economic extraction impact our watershed, and our public health and our communities in really profound ways,” he says. “Data centers are now this new frontier.”
He likens the energetic burst of organizing as reflecting the needs of this moment. “Here in the desert we’re tough, and we’re slow, but if the opportunity is right, just like the monsoon, we respond and we move and we grow.”
And if the project doesn’t go through, he wonders what else could grow in its place. “If we’re not doing Project Blue, then what can x amount of millions of gallons of water be used to support?”
What Tucson City Council members have to say
- Mayor Regina Romero: “To be clear, Project Blue will not be approved by Mayor and Council until a thorough review of the Development Agreement is completed — and a robust public process. Finally, the City of Tucson Mayor and Council are not bound by a particular timeline when it comes to Project Blue.”
- Paul Cunningham: “I’ve already been on record against the project. The only thing that might change my mind is if they can somehow power it with renewable energy and have a sustainable plan for water. Both of these are very unlikely given the scale of the operation.”
- Karin Uhlich: “Even as all of these deliberations unfold, we cannot stop focusing on our established economic development plans. We’ve identified sectors that we know we are uniquely competitive in nationally and even internationally. Transportation and logistics, clean energy. All of these things that we know were well positioned to create high paying jobs and you know robust revenues. We chose those sectors for a reason.”
- Nikki Lee: “Potential isn’t the same as proof. This project raises several red flags and open questions that must be addressed before we make any major commitments.” You can read a list of ongoing questions Lee still has in a recent issue of her newsletter.
- Kevin Dahl: “Although I am concerned with the secrecy of the process, I know enough now to not support it.”
- Lane Santa Cruz: “Community members have raised valid concerns about the project’s water use in our fragile desert environment and about the limited information available due to the confidentiality agreements in place. I share those concerns… At this stage we are at the very beginning of what could be a long process. I do not yet have enough information or enough public trust in the process to take a firm position.”
- Rocque Perez did not respond to a request for comment from Arizona Luminaria.
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